I personally do not think you should buy a house during residency. Yes, there are many who buy houses in residency and do very well. However, I believe that residency is to short of a time horizon to buy a property and then potentially sell it when accounting for closing costs.

For those of you who are real estate gurus and “know your area” and “can’t possibly lose money”, I probably won’t be able to dissuade you. However, I imagine there are a lot of people in 2006 and 2007 who probably felt the same way just before the housing crash happened. I know of residents and fellows during my training who got absolutely crushed by this. Some just lost some money. However, others had banks foreclose on them when they couldn’t sell the house but were forced to move for fellowship or their first jobs. This ruined their credit.

Save as much money as you can:

Saving money in a Roth 401k/403b in residency is something I wish I could go back and do. If you can do this, I recommend it. I do realize that for many of you, student loans will hang over your head, but if you utilize an Income Based Repayment plan, you may still be able to contribute a reasonable amount to your Roth 401k/403b during your training.

The 20 Year Career is kind of my all-encompassing philosophy for being a physician. After 4 years of medicals school and 6 years of training, I’ve had a decade of post-graduate education. For this reason, my plan is to allow myself to work for 20 years as an attending. If I decide to work longer than that, great. However, I am planning for the option to retire at 20 years, around the age of 55 or so.

If this sounds like a reasonable plan to you, then make sure you subscribe to my blog and follow me on my journey. There have been some bumps in the road, but I think my plan is reasonable so far and plan to stick to it. For some, they may think that a 20 year career is too long if you’re a doctor in the FIRE movement. However, my wife and I came out of medical school (and training) with a ton of medical school debt. If you combine that with living in a high cost of living area (Hawaii), then I think a 20 year career isn’t a bad deal.

TL;DR

Congratulations to everyone who matched.

Take some time to celebrate today, but:

Be safe. Don’t drink and drive.

After euphoria ends, look ahead to your medical career, this is when the planning really starts.

-Sensei

Agree? Disagree? Questions, Comments and Suggestions are welcome.

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